


blood & water

by charleybradburies



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 1940s, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1940s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Bars and Pubs, Bisexual Arya Stark, Bisexual Robb Stark, Bisexuality, Catholic Character, Catholic Guilt, Christian Character, Cousins, Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Family, Family Bonding, Family Drama, France (Country), Friends to Lovers, Gay Jon Snow, Gay Panic, Grief/Mourning, House Stark, Investigations, Jewish Character, Jon Snow is a Stark, Lesbian Sansa Stark, M/M, Minor Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell, Multi, Nazis, Nurses & Nursing, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Arya Stark, POV Jon Snow, POV Multiple, POV Robb Stark, POV Sansa Stark, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Femslash, Pre-Poly, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash, Private Investigators, Queer Themes, R Plus L Equals J, Rating May Change, Religion, Reunions, Rickon Stark Lives, Robb Stark Lives, Sibling Love, Siblings, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Soul-Searching, Spies & Secret Agents, To Be Continued, Work In Progress, World War II, Yearning (TM), and by may I mean will, eventually
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-02-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21627808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: Sansa Stark cannot and will not believe that she is the only Stark left at the war's end, and enlists the help of an investigator to search for the rest of her family - among them her estranged cousin Jon, a wounded naval officer with whom she has more in common than she initially thinks. Meanwhile, the other Starks manage the war's aftermath and the paths their own lives have taken in the years away as they search for their ways home.Note/Warning: While I am doing some research, I don't pretend to know how to write truly accurate WW2-era gays and lesbians, or portray Jewish or Catholic people in the UK (or others, even); this is really just a self-indulgent fic that I'm doing my best on.Will have: Briensa, Jonmund, Gendrya, Throbb (with bonus poly involving Talisa), Brandrick, and some more. Has some plot aspects similar to canon, especially seasons 6 and 7.Please enjoy, and if you do, please comment and kudos! I love hearing all your thoughts.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Ned Stark, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Edric "Ned" Dayne & Arya Stark, Jon Snow & Arya Stark & Bran Stark & Rickon Stark & Robb Stark & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow & Catelyn Tully Stark, Jon Snow & Sansa Stark, Jon Snow & Starks, Jon Snow & Ygritte, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Other Relationship Tags to Be Added, Sansa Stark & Starks (ASoIaF), Sansa Stark/Brienne of Tarth, Talisa Maegyr & Robb Stark, Talisa Maegyr/Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy/Robb Stark, Theon Greyjoy/Talisa Maegyr/Robb Stark, Tormund Giantsbane/Jon Snow
Comments: 32
Kudos: 81





	1. Sansa I

It had been a difficult day, however anticipated, when Sansa was blessed with the news that the war had ended on both its bloody fronts. 

They'd won - in some respect. The enemy fires snuffed out, the arms laid down, the chambers of horror laid bare. And yet, the bliss in victory, on its Victory Days and indeed, for long after, was, to Sansa, the bliss of forgetfulness - a luxury not had by the woman the war had forged out of the tall, doe-eyed child she'd been mere years before. An estate empty of much more than her idle hands, a flower-strewn mausoleum, and longtime servants she could scarcely afford to pay, made for little victory, even when her temporary home of London had begun its repairs from the damage that had broken buildings and many lives and yet not a great deal of spirit overall. 

Perhaps it was that selfishness of which she'd always been accused, but the war would wage on in the Stark house until its people came home - until Sansa, the apparent head of household following the war's events, God willing, somehow managed to bring them home. 

It was clear, unfortunately, that a lady seamstress was not subject to possession of talents that would have been particularly helpful, aside from the talents of sense and newfound humility. She could and would have forced her hands through the inevitable bleeding to sew by hand a banner for each of her four missing siblings if she'd believed it would help - but truth be told, she was, for quite possibly the first time, well and terribly sick of sewing. 

She had spent the better part of the past decade sat upon weak wood chairs, hunched over a machine day after dreary day, making countless uniforms, tapestries, and flags. She could not name the soldiers she'd clothed or announced, let alone whose morale she'd aided; she could know that it had aided hers only so much as to keep her heart beating and her head atop her shoulders. 

As such, five painful (and somehow, simultaneously, emotionally empty) months following the war, she sought out a woman with entirely different talents - not quite for comfort, a desire she'd sooner fallen prey to, but for intelligence. 

There was, in an office not so far from Sansa's place of wartime employment, a lady who had served their country so prodigiously as to be allowed to boast as much. However notorious, for her line of work in wartime and for her embrace of masculine pursuits on the whole, this Brienne Tarth was permitted the space to do the business of investigation - now for private parties rather than the military. Such a group of clients, now, Sansa Stark found herself within - for Robb, reported killed in action but never returned home; for Arya, recruited to an unnamed intelligence division and reported missing in action shortly thereafter; for Bran and Rickon, sent by their mother to family friends in the countryside in the early days of London's bombings, then away from that estate to a family whose house they never reached; for Ned and Catelyn, the beloved parents whose bodies rested without rest. 

For Lyanna Stark, Sansa's aunt, who had moved from the family estate when she was even younger than Sansa herself, to a small town up north, the place she'd raised her son, isolated from all but one of her family members - her brother Benjen, who himself had apparently been missing for years, news that had not reached Sansa before Brienne and her assistant Podrick had begun their research; and for Jon, the cousin Sansa had barely even heard of, the first and closest family member whose location was deduced by Ms Tarth's intensive reading of letters Catelyn Stark had never decided to send and instead kept in a locked box in her husband's abandoned study. 

Information, however, was one thing. Actual, personal, investigation was another animal - an avenue it took Sansa some surprising extent of time to pursue. Quite often, she found herself simply offering assistance and company at the Tarth office - preparing tea and lunch, returning papers to their allotted spaces in the file cabinets, and undergoing the process of relearning how to enjoy some stretch of time. 

She'd managed a measure of that, at wartime, with a palatable end imaginable - with a fiancé, and a dear friend who'd become a darling, and pride in her work and her siblings'. With the war over, such things, too, nearly were. Harry, who'd once been enchanted by her, had shifted his intentions of marriage to some other, prettier, girl, and Margaery had gone home to her own family, her need to work gone and her contact with Sansa more and more sparse, and Sansa was left with grief, mysteries, and suitors she could not bring herself to find desirable. The tedium of managing a household full of proverbial ghosts could bring her to such terrible salty tears that it ultimately brought her to the terrifying decision to leave the residence for the time being and pursue her mission to reunite what remained of her family. 

The boldest and farthest adventure she'd faced had been when her parents had taken their children to a cottage by the Scottish coast; she'd been barely twelve and had been immensely excited to be somewhere new, but had not enjoyed some of the particulars of the location, like their rustic accommodations, her constant proximity to her family members, the cliffs that so obviously spelled danger, and the cold, salty wind and water. To go up north, alone but for a woman she'd known barely two months, to find a cousin who may or may not know she exists, because his last known residence is in some small town she's not previously heard of, is an absolutely wild proposition, one that a great part of her cannot believe she's considering.

Yet, finding Jon Stark is the only available step towards having at least some of her family together - and on a chilly morning in 1946's early March, Sansa finds herself waiting for a train heading north, two tickets clasped in one gloved hand and one heavy suitcase in the other, with Brienne Tarth, budding private investigator, easily mistaken for a man in her sharp bespoke suit, in the seat immediately at her left.


	2. Jon I

With all the strangeness of any possible omen, it was of course a fateful day after the night in which Jon dreamed again of Catelyn Stark - the almost-aunt whose singular visit years before the war still occupies too much of his thoughts. 

It had been only her, though, and not Jon's mother Lyanna - or even dear Uncle Benjen - who had sat down to tell him something of the family he'd never known, and perhaps that was what continued to demand his interest. That she, despite her evident discomfort and disapproval - with lips pursed, red hair in an updo that revealed not a strand out of place, and hands clasped tightly, shining rings on the proper finger even with her husband's passing - had followed her late husband's wishes to find Jon, to help provide for him in honor of the mother he'd already lost, had meant a great deal to Jon, even as he felt the shadow of judgment over the encounter.

Following a dream in which Catelyn Stark made her ghostly return to Jon's small town home, he wakes, feeling oddly, quite like his mind had dragged him back to battle again, and is able to reason that in a way it had indeed. It's a cold March morning, one that has penetrated the apartment in which Jon currently lives well before the time of his waking, and while he feels quite willing to remain abed instead, he'd done so for much of the time since he'd returned and feels that the day was calling more strongly.

He pulls himself out of the bed too quickly, groaning as the pain in his chest intensifies, its wounds having still not healed entirely. He shoves his arms into a flannel shirt and finds it too large; realizing it must be his housemate Tormund's instead, he still decides against taking it off - less because of the potential pain of undressing than because Tormund's shirts always seemed to smell homey, like fire and whiskey, and gave Jon much more comfort than the simple fact of being warmly clothed. Should someone, particularly the housemate in question or his daughters, notice the ill-fitting item, Jon would offer easily enough the excuse of his injuries. He thinks, for half a moment, of how both his mother and Lady Catelyn Stark would likely scold him for such a lie, but bitterly thinks his own cannot compare to his mother's long-spun yarns. Thoughts like those had little place in a world where his questions would go unanswered, however, so he pushes it from his brain as best he could in favor of carefully slipping into recently cleaned trousers and choosing a pair of boots that could brave the snow still falling outside. 

He pulls a heavy leather jacket over his shoulders and brushes his hair before covering it with a knit hat, pleased to see the hair growing closer to the length he preferred. He'd tried to preserve it during the war but ultimately decided that argument against his superiors was not a high enough priority. Sure enough, that curly dark hair was growing back, and was properly past his ears again. Looking at the ends popping out below the edges of the grey hat, he thinks of Munda, Tormund's eldest daughter, the one who had engineered his return to Hardhome, whose first reaction after happening upon him in a surgical tent had been surprise at his short hair.

He'd been as shocked to see her as she had to see him, as at the age of 15 she'd apparently passed herself as a woman of 18, old enough to serve as a nurse in the thick of the European front, where she'd ultimately found Jon. He'd been wounded terribly, to the point at which his survival had not expected, but enough effort and prayer had been put into him that he was sent back in Munda's care, with plenty of scars and a cane to show for his part. She'd originally delivered him to his foster father Davos, a midshipman and fisherman a couple kilometers away, who had gleefully welcomed Jon home but found his medical care too difficult to manage. 

Munda, then, had brought him back to her own home, settling him in with her father Tormund and sister Britta, above the pub her father ran, the singular establishment of its sort in their town. The pair devotedly followed her instructions, letting her expertise be spent in their nearest hospital while they worried over the increments of time between Jon's medication regimen and bandage changes. Jon was better suited to labor than to rest, though, and his scowling had worn them down enough over the intervening months to now be allowed to be of assistance in the pub. 

It was either that or he was legitimately recovering from the war, and the latter felt like the last possible option. He didn't know if one could truly recover, with battle permanently scarring him, still in his muscle and skin and memory. A morning upon which he was haunted by family troubles and not the vision of warfare was frankly rather welcome, and on this day it is that fact which draws him away from the pub and down to the town's cemetery. In accordance with the times, though, a sign announcing its plan to expand due to its recent influx of residents gives him a moment of pause - a moment of reflection, to recall many of their faces. 

His path, however, from the front gate to his mother, is the same. The number of steps has decreased since her interment, as his legs have grown longer with age, but that has been the only change. He even kneels, reflexively, in the same spot of the gravel path, picking the finest pebble he could as per Lyanna's own request, rolling it inside his left hand until he reaches her place. He sets it atop the tombstone, glancing over the silvery stone as though it might be different today, as though the date of death might disappear and she reappear. He kneels again, setting his cane down with his greatest gentleness, and cries in the quiet of the morning, until it's no longer morning, and his knees have come to hate the pressure of his weight upon them.

The quiet stays with him for some time, until he's near halfway home, passing the hotel, and a loud, familiar voice calls out to him: the expectant, gasping tone of his once-sweetheart Ygritte, who rushes out of the hotel doors barely after he's heard her shout for him, a duster still in her hand. 

She stops, breath catching as Jon positions his leg to be sure he stays standing for whatever it is she needs to say, and hopes it won't be about rekindling what had withered between them before the war. The sun catches her deep red hair, sparking it to orange, and his stomach turns - perhaps because it's been empty for hours, and perhaps because it realizes there is weight to what follows. 

"There's a couple of ladies in from London, come to look for ye. One claims family business, even. Looks sharper'n ye, though."

Jon almost chuckles at her, but it doesn't quite make it out of his mouth. His mouth's run dry, rather; he's thinking, daring to privately hope who might have come. A man only had so much family, after all, and he'd never heard more than a whisper of his father's side.

_But Ned and Catelyn Stark had two daughters._

"Aye, ye'd think that, of a Londoner," he remarks back to Ygritte. She rolls her eyes as though she didn't set him up for it.

"They've retired to their rooms as I last saw, but I could tell them to drop by the pub. Didn't catch a name, but Tormund'll be wary of a newcomer, 'specially a fancy one. More 'specially one askin' after _you_." 

Jon's stomach growls, and he nods hastily, giving half a shrug as well, his body awkward and unsure. 

"Tell them to come by," he answers. His voice isn't very sturdy, and Ygritte scrunches up her eyes, all too aware. 

"Tell them," he repeats, and that time it sounds like he's speaking of something more serious. Her face softens, and his fingers grip his cane more tightly. 

"See you 'round, Ygritte," he says, and watches her take a deep breath. 

"See ye 'round, Jon," she says, gesturing at his path down the street with the duster she's still holding. He follows, of course, until he's reached the pub, stopping in downstairs instead of hobbling up the back steps. He's greeted with Tormund's warm smile from behind the bar, and he muses that it might as well not be cold out. 

"A good walk?" Britta calls out, and Jon spots her at a corner table, counting their silverware. 

"Okay," he replies uncertainly, missing a few beats, and catches Tormund's concern in his field of vision.

"Not in more pain, are you? The cane's s'posed to help." 

"Nah, the cane helps. I, uh - I saw Ygritte. On my way home. She says there's some ladies come to look for me." 

He says that much as firmly as he can state anything, and still sees the uncertainty in Tormund and Britta. 

"Southerners again?" Tormund asks, in a voice both showing that he's trying not to jump to judgment and reminding Jon that he hadn't much enjoyed the presence of Lady Catelyn. Jon can only nod in reply to the query; he relates, too, knowing quite acutely his own discomfort, and yet his had been in part because he wished he'd gotten more than one encounter. 

The pub door swings open again, not much later, and when he angles himself toward it to see a tall woman in a dress his neighbors would know as Sunday best and sleek red hair draped down her sides, he nearly thinks he does, that this is what his dream foretold, a moment half a nightmare - but then, she's skinnier than Lady Catelyn, and younger, and her face looks softer and kinder, and she's got another, taller, masculine woman at her side, and she catches Jon's eyes with a strange hint of recognition before she pauses, losing whatever word she had as she exhales.

Tormund coughs, and whether out of necessity or to purposely break the moment, Jon can't tell - but she collects herself, enough to speak, enough to stretch her hand out to Jon. 

"Hello. I'm - I'm Sansa Stark."


	3. Robb I

The musty warmth of Robb's locked living space surrounds him, the bookcase that topped the trapdoor to his home doing little to keep Talisa's Norman radio from lulling him to an uneasy sleep. The language, somehow, still remained quite unfamiliar, even after months on end spent in France, and some days, he wondered if his nurse chose to listen in that native language so that her patients would not comprehend the news until she passed it onto them. 

The little light that flickers from the oil lamp, an old thing as weak and as surprisingly alive as Robb himself, gives him a view of the dark hair of his roommate Theon, who was fast asleep on the small cot next to his, and little more. Robb focuses all too keenly on it, recalling the couple times he's had a hand in that hair, imagining what would come of reaching out on this wintry morning - but something in Robb's gut knows he'd want to touch more than just Theon's hair, so he keeps his hands to himself, watching Theon's breath move his body for a few moments, until he hears the telltale moving of furniture from above. The sound doesn't seem to rouse Theon, who's a terribly deep sleeper, but the smell of food proves more effective; the other man groans himself awake as Talisa steps down the stairs, breakfast tray in hand, and Robb is left to hope he's not red in the face from his moment of indulgence. 

Talisa's bronze-toned skin shines in the flickering light as she steps down the stairs, her practiced smile brighter as she greets them, her comforting voice welcoming them back to the world of waking people. Despite their not truly being a part of the community that, in some way, fostered them, Talisa was convinced that an attempt at regular routine would help her mismatched pair of patients recover. Apart from her, though, the radio stations of northwestern France were their sole connection to the outside world, and with their native languages being the distinct but similar Englishes of Britain and America, that did little by way of connection. Robb reasons his attachments to his companions have grown from that restriction - he'd gone from being in a full house, with numerous siblings, his parents, and the servants for the estate, to serving in the Navy and having many brothers-in-arms, to living in a windowless cellar in a foreign country with two unfamiliar companions.

At least, they'd begun unfamiliar - after so long, awkwardness remained but rarely dominated. Robb's school-taught French had bloomed into something that resembled fluency in conversation, and Talisa had drawn from her own experiences with English. They'd become an odd couple, as it were, if three people could be referred to as a couple. Closeness had nearly been a requirement, for all the ways they were different; Talisa had brought them to the shelter of her inherited home to continue the medical care their countries' own nurses were too busy to manage, and made their presence private upon her discovery of their heritage: Theon's being an Irish American, and Robb's Jewish paternal and Catholic maternal sides, neither making the other any more acceptable in the eyes of someone disapproving or hateful. 

It's moments like meals during which such things seem so present: the wonder at what to pray, if at all; wonder at which language would be best heard by whoever was listening; wonder at whether they were listening in the first place - if this mismatched band and their cellar, if the long string of events that had brought them together, were part of some grand plan. Even as his main task was directing his aching hands to help him eat, sharing bread and a topinambour - the Jerusalem artichoke, which bore no closely factual relation to either Jerusalem or what Robb could have recognized as an artichoke - those questions remained. 

"More dead declared," Talisa says carefully, her smile leaving her as she set her hands down in front of her plate. The circular table just barely accommodated the platter and three small plates, but Talisa had moved the pitcher of lukewarm water to the dresser that stood between the men's cots as Robb had gotten to his feet and helped Theon struggle to his full height, a couple inches above Robb. They look a mess, the both of them, with unbrushed hair and no need to change from their loose clothes, and Talisa's apron has a smear of blood on it that looked to have undergone a previous wash. It was a state Robb's mother would not have let their family be caught in, but Catelyn Stark was, unfortunately, gone, and would not have been with him if she lived, besides. 

"Mmm," Theon replies, adjusting his position in his chair in discomfort. Talisa's gaze shifts, looking him over as if to see if some issue could be observed and solved, and then returns to Robb, one of her hands extending towards his, mouth slightly open as she searches for words.

He takes her hand, and is surprised to find it cold.

"Your forces have changed the designation for some of your missing."

Robb's heart sinks into his stomach, and the whole room seems to sink with it. Theon stops mid-chew to let the harshness of their almost silence rest.

"Arya," Robb realizes aloud, almost unthinkingly, his voice cracking in its desperate moan. "They'll stop looking for her." 

Talisa's look becomes one of pity, as though he spoke like a madman.

"I would believe they have, Robb." 

He'd believe her, she's given him no reason not to, she's given her home to house him, she's risked her safety, and that all rushes through his head - but he shouts his disbelief now, with a hand banging on their table and rattling their breakfast, potentially making himself a danger to the three of them and yet not caring. 

"No! No, I won't - I won't," he stammers furiously, feeling tears build and willing them not to, as though Talisa and Theon have not seen him in any worse state than to be a brother crying over a sister. 

His little sister, a fire inside a girl - a half-Jewish young woman, sent to fight in the thick of the front if Sansa's last letters to Robb remained true. If Arya was dead, it was likely by German hands, and if she was lost, she was not in a land where she was welcome, and she was not somewhere he could find her. Going to war was supposed to be a measure Robb took to protect his family, but all it had done was break them apart, scattered to the wind. Bran and Rickon in the far North, old enough now to count as grown men, Sansa out to London, Catelyn to the grave, and Robb and Arya displaced in other countries, unable to return home for whatever reason - or were they?

"I have to go," he declares after his moment of thought, far more aggressive than he'd consciously intend to be. "I have to go home."

Talisa answers him with half a chuckle at the absurdity, before realizing he's serious and settling her face. Theon takes another bite of the food he's still holding, and Talisa sends him a glare for interrupting their silence. Both Robb and Theon have voiced their hopes of going home before, but never so fervently and never in a mindset such as this. Theon and his sister were not close, but she, too, was in their Navy, high-ranking, and quite likely home, while his older brothers had died in the previous World War; Talisa's brother had died early in the occupation of France. Only Robb had siblings who had expressed excitement at seeing him home and had tried to stay in touch, and only Robb had a sister at home trying to carry their family on her shoulders. 

"Robb-" Talisa starts to say, surely about to remind him that even France is still unsafe, and that he has no way to get back to his own country, and that he is a wounded former prisoner of war, with little to show for the time since his rescue, but she doesn't manage to do so. Theon interrupts instead.

"We should," he says casually, not yet done chewing his current bite of breakfast. "We should find a way to get to London, at least. There must be some way." 

He looks between Robb and Talisa, his expression declaring that he finds the answer obvious, empathy or something else illuminating the encouragement. Robb could kiss him, both in a figure of speech and an act of desire, and perhaps that's not only because of his statement, but it's true and Robb realizes it much too heavily in the present moment. He mouths a "thank you," though, and gets a pursed-lip smile in return. 

Talisa shakes her head, but she lets out that half-chuckle now, possibly one of a group member who knows they've been outvoted. 

"Yes, I suppose there must be some way."


	4. Sansa II

By the time they reach the hotel - an inn, more accurately - in Hardhome, the morning after they'd left London, Sansa is exhausted enough to be unable to keep it from showing. Some very nice girls, perhaps around her age, usher them in and show them to their room. Brienne insists on carrying the luggage, and Sansa settles for seeking out a maid who's declared she could answer any questions they have about the area, a redhead whose accent Sansa needs most of her attention to understand. (She balks a bit at Sansa's search, but "I'll see what I can do" is neighborly language for protecting someone, and Sansa is left only to wonder whether her mother had been particularly abrasive, or at the very least, what the maid's intentions were.) 

The train ride had taken Sansa and Brienne north to Newcastle, and a rented car had gotten them the rest of the way west. She could tell that the towns they'd travelled through were towns when they were within their borders, but the area seemed more reminiscent of lands where one vacations when overwhelmed with city life than a place where people lived out their day-to-day. She'd enjoyed watching out the window as they'd passed by, feeling more like the trip was an adventure than that it was a charged mission. 

Having Brienne had helped with that - even at the moment an apparent gentleman had seen Sansa sitting alone on the train and begun approaching her; he was received only with terse politeness until Brienne returned from the dining cabin with drinks to demand the reason for his presence, her sheer proximity commanding and her appearance rather similar to that of a man, particularly in her silhouette. Sansa's as well-protected as she'd be if Robb were her escort, though it did give a different sort of feeling, one Sansa couldn't quite place - something similar but somehow larger than her attachment to Margaery, that flowery flame of wartime. She'd known she was safe with Margaery, but more on Margaery's terms than her own, for she had always found difficulty in setting boundaries with anyone who found a deeper interest in her than to praise her for her ladylike accomplishments. Perhaps it was because she had sought Brienne's skills, or perhaps because Brienne was accustomed to holding a gentleman's role; still, the developing dynamic - she ached to call it a friendship, to name it something dear, but as she was paying Brienne it seemed improper - was too notably unique not to give attention.

Yet as she was settling herself in their hotel room - on the bed farthest from the door, for Brienne insisted it was safest - Sansa realized she thinks on it too much, and redirected her thought to another uncertain dynamic: the man they had come to meet. A cousin who's perhaps heard her name once, who's probably never seen a photograph, who's lost his mother and their uncle and who fought in the war, just like Robb, just like Arya. Who lives in a small town where an overgrown inn counts as a hotel and families have farms on the outskirts and there's a general store and a single, popular pub, and Sansa is utterly out of place. 

She'd only gotten a few moments to fear she'd come this far for nothing, and then the redheaded maid - Ygritte, she'd said her name was again, and Sansa had finally caught it - knocked on the door to tell them that Jon was down at the pub. Out the front door and to the right and straight down Main Street - the White Wolf, with a sign to match, and it smells like whiskey on the outside, too. 

It hadn't been a long walk, though the feeling that the whole town had this small center did unsettle her some. Everything was so very _open_ , in a way that seemed nearly wild - like that which was civilized was set up as a front for something deeper, freer. She and Brienne were notably foreign in their dress and guarded demeanor, an experience Sansa would not have anticipated on the land of her own country. And never is that more clear, never more of a bucket of cold water, than when she steels herself to enter the pub and steps in, only to look up at a man on a barstool and see her father staring back at her. 

No, not him, truly, though for a moment the resemblance to her mother's old photos shocks her into silence, even while she notices the little differences: the curls in his hair, his rounded face, his seemingly slighter build, the large (possibly too large) flannel he's buttoned about half the way. 

_All this way, and now, what to say?_ Her first instinct is to mutter his name, but she doesn't actually know him, so politeness keeps the syllable inside her as she's caught in that moment - a short-lived trap they're both in until one of their observers, the tall redheaded man looming behind the bar with a glass he's stopped drying, stood almost immediately behind Jon in Sansa's sightline, coughs, and snaps Sansa out of it. 

_An introduction, that'd be a start._

She shoves a hand towards her cousin, weaker and more awkward than she'd have liked, but well enough.

"Hello," she begins, too roughly. "I'm...I'm Sansa Stark." 

He lets out what could be a chuckle, what in her father was half that and half a remark that something was obvious or unnecessary, and uses a cane she'd not seen at first to maneuver himself off the stool so he can be closer to her when he returns her handshake, studying her just as she's studying him, trying to keep her focus on them and not on those who were watching them.

" _Jon_ Stark," he says back, emphasizing his given name, a wistful tone behind it like he'd been waiting for this.

"Yes, I know," her reflexes shove out too quickly, too excitedly, and she pulls out of the handshake, wincing. Uncharacteristically, she simply starts on an attempt at explanation, a stuttered and jerky speech, nothing like her usually composed self.

"Sorry, that's - I just, um - you look so much like my father, Ned, um-"

He shrugs, smiling, as though he's heard that before, and then cuts her off: "you look like your mother." She's certainly heard that, and much too often, but here it's a reassurance - confirmation that he has some concept of what she's doing here, now, in his town, and it brings a truer grin to Sansa's face. He opens his mouth again, then, as though he's got something else to tell her, but the room has stopped waiting on them and patrons are speaking to each other softly again, and he seems to forget. 

The man behind the counter finally dries the glass in his hands, starting back on his tasks now that the suspense was easing up. 

"You going to sit and get the lass and her friend some drink, or jus' stand here on your bad leg?" he asks, thickly and expectantly. Jon turns his head back around, and Sansa just barely catches an eyeroll that looks all too much like one of Arya's. 

"Oh!" she gasps, throwing her arm out to her right, towards Brienne who has been patiently waiting a few steps away from her, unintentionally putting her hand on Brienne's sleeve, and leaving it in place when Brienne moves closer to her. "Apologies. This is Brienne Tarth. She's been of immense help to me." 

Jon leans into his cane and leans toward them for another handshake, watched curiously closely by the man behind him and by a blonde girl who's left her seat in a booth to come over to them all; he grins, like he knows some lovely secret, an interest Sansa notes the other man shares.

"The Royal Lady Commando, no? An undeserved honor."

A precious rare blush has creeped onto Brienne's face, and it brings Sansa some warmth. Brienne refuses to keep that, though, and nods towards Jon's cane.

"Deserved, quite clearly."

Jon fails to toss the compliment back at her, and the blonde girl darts into the conversation, putting her own hands towards Brienne and Sansa simultaneously.

"I'm Britta. That's my da, Tormund; Jon lives with us. We run this place."

" _We_ ," the man - Tormund, she knows now - scoffs teasingly. Britta smiles, and stands up on her toes, reaching onto the bar and grabbing a few coasters before gesturing towards one of the corner booths, one that seems easy to see but harder to hear. She heads towards it, and Brienne touches Sansa's arm before they follow, a touch that lingers as a similar moment happens at the bar, Tormund's hand atop Jon's shoulder and them exchanging a couple soft words. The questions her mind creates about her cousin gives her more unanswered ones about herself, though - that won't be dealt with today. 

Brienne scoots to the far end, leaving Sansa much of their side of the booth, and Jon sits to face them, leaning his cane against the divider between him and the next booth. Britta goes back to the bar to grab a trio of drinks that's already been prepared, setting them down and darting back to her father's side. Sansa thinks to protest, and Brienne quite nearly begins, but Jon catches their uncertainty. 

"Just whiskey. Dunno if that's too hard for a Londoner, but..." he offers with half a shrug, and she almost wants to feel some offense - but only almost. His tone is careful, an experiment in some informality.

"I'm _not_ technically a Londoner, actually. We're - well, I suppose it's the same to you, anyway." 

Jon chuckles, and raises his short glass towards her and then Brienne, cueing them to clink theirs against it, with far less fanfare than Sansa would consider usual. She tries to recall how exactly she'd attempted to plan out this conversation, but fails to bring all that much to memory, and starts anew, stilling her anxiety by telling herself that it is indeed a new start. It's not ideal that it begins with the telltale burn of alcohol down in her chest, but it's not as though she's come here from an ideal place, so it will do.

"Navy, was it?" Brienne prompts after a single small sip, moving towards gleaning more details from Jon, although she knows many of them already. Sansa shifts around in her seat a bit, and finds her own leg immediately next to hers. Brienne's lack of recoil is a greater comfort than Sansa might readily admit; it's difficult in the moment to look back to Jon and not to her thigh. 

"His Majesty's," Jon confirms, a touch of melancholy in his voice before he turns his focus to Sansa. "And you?"

"A London factory," she answers, feeling rather like she'd done terribly little when held up against him and Brienne. _We hold the line at home,_ Catelyn had told her, but Sansa had done her best to hold it and no Stark they'd sent away had come back home - so what, in truth, had been done?

"I - I've started looking for my family now," she pushes out, and Jon's expression falls, confusion peeking through his eyes. " _Our_ family." 

"Looking?" he asks, and sounds like she's wounded him with that. She sucks in a quick breath, and then takes another burning sip of her whiskey.

"None of my siblings have returned home. You...you were the closest family that Brienne and I could find. The closest living, at least."

Her voice is weak and she hopes it sounds gentle, but Jon becomes harder to read as he considers that, as though it's the last thing he expected to hear, as though it's the last thing he could have wanted to hear.

His voice, too, is weak when he responds to her, but he still sounds so much stronger than she feels.

"You _did_ find me, though."


	5. Jon II

"I - I've started looking for my family now. _Our_ family." 

Sansa's comment comes gently, sadly - and it's salt in a wound he still has, the almost-total estrangement his mother had decided upon as a young woman. Lyanna was far too stubborn to change her mind on the matter, regardless of how fondly she spoke of her brother Ned - when she did speak of him - and now Jon had only one of his daughters, a relatively newfound cousin, for his own birth family.

"Looking?" he asks, trying to glean information without pressing too hard. She takes another breath and another sip, seemingly more familiar with hard alcohol than she'd appear. 

"None of my siblings have returned home. You...you were the closest family that Brienne and I could find. The closest living, at least."

Her voice is heart-wrenchingly tender, and he can reply with nothing stronger than that.

"You _did_ find me, though."

It's all he could say, isn't it? What encouragement, what question, could change their situation? He sits straighter, trying to exercise some measure of propriety, and unintentionally turns his head to the side, towards the rest of the pub, towards those watching - some casually and a couple (those he expected, to be fair) with rapt attention. It sinks in now, deep and sorrowful, just how little he knows of his _family_ , how little he might ever be able to know. Sansa gives a sad, small smile, like she knows he intends for his comment to comfort her, but gives no indication it was effective. 

Brienne grabs some papers from inside her suit jacket, pulling off a twine tie and setting them on the table, facing them towards Jon. Her hand drops behind the table, where her body is close to Sansa's; Sansa's cheeks are struck with a blush of pink, as though she'd stepped back into the cold outside, and the possibility that they're touching, that something nearly private is transpiring, thickens Jon's breath, with some realized desire to know, to understand - to speak of his entire truth and be understood. The papers are before him, though, and more important - he can see envelopes holding what he presumes are letters, and a couple pages that look to have been pulled from a journal. 

He draws the stack closer, moving his drink so he can thumb through most the papers easily. They're warm from their time in Brienne's jacket rather than cold from the outside, and he's glad of it. The journal paper is covered in what he thinks is Sansa's script - a pristine list of decidedly not pristine information, a pointed list of people she cares to find, it seems: Arya, Robb, Bran & Rickon, Jon, Benjen, Jory, Edmure, Lysa, Robin, Brynden. Jon doesn't recognize some of the names, but still looks at their details, too; Sansa's made quite the effort to compile what she has available, and clearly she's got more effort ahead of her, if she intends to follow through. 

At the end of Jon's own section - where she notes his birthday, the school he graduated from, the position he held in the Navy, Davos' name and his residence in Hardhome - she's put in smaller writing the questions of his mother's resting place and father's family. For all the sadness evident in it, it fills him with an unexpected affection. He takes a drink, one a little longer than he'd call normal, and looks to the other papers. Sansa takes another drink, too, and then unsettles him with what sounds like a sigh; he looks across the table to see her looking intently at her handiwork, sadness still beneath her expression though there's relief in her eyes.

"A lot of work, here," he says, and his voice is flatter than he expects it to be, with all he's feeling, all the mess of being human. She opens her mouth quickly, but takes a moment to say anything.

"Isn't everything?"

There's something that sounds like amusement in that, and a small smile on her lips, and Jon actually laughs - just for a moment, but it happens. Sansa's smile widens a bit, and Jon nods in agreement.

"Yeah...yeah, that seems to be the way of things, doesn't it?" 

It's phrased as a question, but begs no verbal response, and as Jon's giving attention to the individual items she simply sips her whiskey.

He does note that her left hand doesn't come back above the table until a moment after Brienne's right does. They've been private enough not to be widely noticed, and he certainly doesn't know either of them well enough to mention it - and he knows that acts and impulses of an affectionate nature are regarded so very differently in the case of women - but part of him wants to praise the gentle bravery of their gestures. 

He touches the stack of letters with the caution he'd use for fragile glass, as though the words could fall and break and slash his fingers - and frankly, when he first sees a blurred, dreamy script upon the first envelope he opens and glances down at its contents to see the signature 'your beloved baby sister, Lya', he rather worries they might. It stops him right in his tracks, enough that when he tenses up the hand of his next to his glass, Sansa's right darts out to grab it - or rather, to settle atop it. Her hand is warm, and for some unplaceable reason, he turns his over so that their hands are actually clasped.

"You don't _have_ to read the letters. I just...didn't want to be without, if you wanted to," she tells him, sounding both remorseful and maternal somehow. 

There's some sound of talk and movement behind him - he makes out Britta's voice within the low rumble of fellow pubgoers' words, with no thought of strangeness - and it pulls Sansa straighter up, her hand away from his and him all too aware of the change, for it feels again like the chance of losing someone, even though there's so little he _knows_ of her, and then there's the familiarity of someone he _can_ say he knows in Tormund's hand against his shoulder. Jon leans instinctively into the touch, and he catches curiosity in both Sansa and Brienne as he turns again to his left. 

Tormund's done well to wipe any displeasure from his expression, but there's discomfort in his first glance down, soon covered or perhaps remedied when Jon smiles up at him, and he smiles back, moving closer to the table as opposed to standing behind Jon. As ever, Jon bites down the urge to move his hand up to Tormund's, wanting to seek the older man's warmth, which he's gotten precious little of since Jon's medical treatment had progressed to his being able to walk around without his chest wounds threatening to bleed him out. 

A small voice, though, whispers that he's sat across from what could be accepting company, even without a direct confirmation of that. 

Tormund looks to Sansa, now, and Jon hopes he's not got something untoward on his tongue. 

"Britta's wanting to know if you'd like a pie. She's even got some meat, could fix one up nice if you're hungry, on us."

Sansa looks touched, as though this is a grand gesture on his part, and starts what both Jon and Brienne believe is to be a polite refusal, her hands pushed in front of her as some manner of gesticulating.

"Oh, that's sweet of her, but she needn't -"

Brienne's hand comes to sit upon Sansa's, and as Tormund's gaze drops along with Jon's, right to those hands, Brienne speaks and makes even more murky her role in Sansa's search - _theirs_ , now, wasn't it? "You haven't eaten since we were on the train this morning. We should allow their kindness."

Tormund glances around their pub, and his hand changes place on Jon's shoulder - still, though, thankfully, not leaving. He chuckles, and looks back to Sansa, whose resolve has thoroughly softened.

"Don't think my girl plans to let you refuse," he says, amusement and pride both present, and Jon meets Tormund's eyes with his question, trying not to think on how much he enjoys looking into them. 

Tormund winks. "Don't see her 'round now. Must've rushed to the kitchen once she told me to offer." He gives Jon's shoulder a squeeze, and then leaves with a grin to return to his usual place behind the bar. Jon absentmindedly reaches to touch his shoulder, disliking the feeling of being left, certainly not by such comforting, strong, large, great hands. Hands he needs to think considerably less about, especially in the company of new acquaintances. He wonders if he now bears that telltale blush that had graced Sansa's cheeks not long ago.

He looks back to his cousin to see she's got a small, slightly awkward smile on her lips. He returns it as best he can, and grabs at the pile in front of him, the letter he'd held before, penned by his mother, splayed open where it lay. He holds it tenderly this time, too, as he wonders whether he wishes to read it. He decides against that, for the time being, and sets it to the side, picking up another in its place, then another, and another, just to see who wrote to whom: Lyanna to Ned, and Ned back to her; Benjen and Ned to each other; Ned and Catelyn to each other; Robb to Catelyn and to Sansa; and Arya to Sansa as well. 

"There are more - seems my mother kept near everything - but I thought these the most important." Sansa gives explanation as though he's asked for it, her voice tentative and soft. 

He taps her list, right on top of his own name.

"I, um. I can take you to my mother, tomorrow, if you'd like to see where she is. It's not a Catholic cemetery, by any means; I don't know if you -"

"I'd like that," she confirms quickly. "I'd quite like that. Would you tell me about her? And Benjen? And your foster father? And you, of course. I don't mean to exclude." 

"Only if you do the same for the family you know - and yourself." 

Sansa nods, with a smile truer than her small sad ones - and Jon picks up a letter at random and pulls it from its envelope.


	6. Robb II

As with her medical prowess, Talisa proves herself barely short of a true miracle worker. She moves Robb and Theon upstairs, and for the first time indicates she intends them to stay above ground. It's different, and bright, though the air doesn't smell or feel much clearer, which is disappointing. 

A couple of Talisa's neighbors raise their eyes, but she claims Robb is her fiancé, here with his brother, spinning a tale not so terribly far from the truth that Robb forgets it after she's narrated her conversation with an older woman from across the street, of being blessed with Robb's charm in a medical tent and feeling a deep need to entwine their lives. To his pleasant surprise, the woman encourages her to recall her intention to advance in her career - a chance she might lose, should she marry, let alone an Englishman with intentions to steal her away from Rouen, one without the money to buy her a proper ring. It may be her gentleness in recounting it, as the three of them are toiling together to make something that resembles a substantive supper, but Robb wonders if that's what she wants him to do - and feels less opposition in himself than he'd have expected, having realized in the somewhat unfortunate setting of his wartime company that his interests very distinctly skewed male. 

"You'll let her be a doctor, right, Robb? Make sure none of us die 'till it's old age that finally fucks us?" Theon's voice, as it and his words often did, toed the line between sincerity and mockery. Talisa purses her lips and whips her dish towel at his legs, her dress dancing high on her legs as she twirls in her action. Theon whines as though it's hurt terribly, and Robb can't help laughing at his theatrics. 

"You injure me, you're the one who has to treat that," Theon gripes, and Talisa retaliates with something that resembles proper logic.

" _None_ of us should be thinking about getting _fucked_ until we make it at _least_ to Paris."

"Too late," Theon and Robb answer in unison, neither of them sounding particularly genuine - but also not sounding decidedly false. Talisa tuts and puts her hands on her hips, and reminds Robb of his mother far too much for this moment, lighthearted and yet electric, friendly and fiery - a shared moment with two people he's thought all too much about _fucking_. 

"Insufferable, the both of you," Talisa pretends to grumble. 

"And yet you choose to suffer us," Robb replies with unfeigned warmth, and she pauses.

"Ever the fool am I," she says, grinning.

"And yet, a future doctor," Theon interjects, and they both send him their smiles, too. In a slightly uncharacteristic move, he goes to stand next to Talisa at the stove, close enough to touch her arm without moving his much at all, which he does anyway, with a gentle hand as he reaches up to a shelf and grabs three plates.

Robb can feel the horrid swell of a deep, fearful, jealousy, and yet he's entirely uncertain which of them he's jealous of. To touch Talisa, or to feel Theon's hand? A surprisingly confusing matter, apparently. A stifled part of him squirms, thinking of his mother's wishes for him - wishes a responsible, _good_ son would honor, even after her death, wishes a Robb who did not know war still dreamed of proving true - but he somehow still wants to fight his own better judgment along with his religions.

His companions haven't indicated that their moment is at all private, but Robb feels like he's interrupting when he speaks up. Theon's in the process of handing him a plate, and Talisa is tasting something from her finger, an image that sticks too firmly in Robb's head.

"Do we have plans for Paris?" he asks, mostly to Talisa though he's taking the plate that Theon presents, noting too late that Theon's put his hand entirely underneath it. Their fingers are next to each other for only a few seconds, but the sensation of being so close to _holding_ hands lasts much longer.

He never signed up for this, he thinks, vaguely. But then, Talisa's turned around to them, a smile on her face, and his focus shifts just enough.

"I spoke with Lucette at work earlier. She says she will arrange a ride with her cousin, probably sometime next week. If we are cautious we should be able to arrive without coming to further harm. It will perhaps be more difficult to get from Paris to London."

"And we're certain the Channel isn't an option?" Theon pipes up, more concerned than the half-joking way he'd first suggested it, and sets the other two plates down on the table now that she's spoken. Talisa nods at him, wincing for good measure. 

Theon has very enthusiastically tried to find a way to facilitate Robb's return home, voicing only the smallest desire for his own home; he seemed both invested in Robb's success and avoidant of his history, and Robb could not figure out which intrigued him more. For as much as Theon could _talk_ , he was a master of the art of not saying much of anything if he did not specifically wish to, and as such, many details were still unknown to Robb, details he only continued to hope for the chance to learn. 

Talisa decides that supper is ready, and demands they wash their hands. She laughs as the two of them fumble over who's going first, and Theon grabs Robb's hands and pulls them under the lukewarm water with his, seemingly not noticing the heartbeat threatening to break out of Robb's chest. Robb doesn't know if he's grateful or disappointed for that, but it's probably both.

He's only ever been good at making his mind up when he's being reckless, after all.


	7. Arya I

As on any other day, Arya wakes with the dawn, staying in place on the blessedly soft mattress until her bedfellow groans himself awake as well. She hated mornings as much as anyone, even after years of enduring early ones, but she could barely stand Gendry's typical grumpiness when he _was_ well-rested, so she doesn't interfere with his sleep any more than with other irritants. 

When they're with their team, at least. In only their pair, everything felt different, everything worked out differently. Their team was successful, but the two of them worked particularly well together. She's even managed to whittle her way into being someone who brings out more gentleness and joy in him, more than she's seen him show with anyone that wasn't a small child. She hasn't entirely decided how she feels about that. She could make friends with anyone, even surly gunsmiths - even relocated Nazis pretending to have become proper academics - but here there remained an undercurrent of attraction, something she'd only managed to put a label on by trying to figure out what her mother and sister would say. (For all the pain the consideration brought, it was a helpful strategy.) Unfortunately, in the quiet of a New York morning, in a large but shared bed, with _his_ long limbs and black hair on a hotel's white sheets, close to but not touching her, that unmentioned desire feels too obvious. 

Whether for her sake or in fact, none of their teammates have ever seemed to notice - and it strangely reassures her to know that for all their respective skill, none of them are particularly discreet or tactful, let alone observant enough to impress. Among them, those skills remained ones that she alone truly excelled at.

All too soon, she hears a key in the door to their room. She reflexively reaches for the knife tucked in her pillow, but of course does not need it. 

"We're free, lads!" shouts Lommy, rousing their whole room. "And Arya," he amends, meeting her eyes as she glares up at him from where she's up on the hotel room's larger bed. She hears Ned sigh from the other bed, clearly disappointed at the implication they'll need to get up - which is surely what this is.

Hot Pie, with his substantial weight curled around itself on a corner chair, groans somehow even more loudly than he speaks, "how the fuck are we free?"

Lommy almost dances in place, his unkempt hair bouncing with him, and accentuates as many of his words as he can, his sentence slowed down for emphasis. "We are going...to Paris!"

Hot Pie grumbles. He hated flying. As such, a travel-based job was strange for him, but he'd been recruited for intelligence in a near-accident, one that meant his culinary talent and willingness to swear to secrecy were the deciding factor of his career path. 

"Back to Europe. Fun," Hot Pie supplies.

"City of love," Ned says in argument, and Arya and Gendry are in unison as they chuckle. 

"You always seem to forget we're only going places to track and kill people," Gendry says, very matter-of-fact and somehow still rustling up that despicable desirous feeling. Ned scoffs.

"Arya does most of the killing. The rest of us should be allowed to have fun."

Arya sits up, ignoring that their eyes are on her. "Oh, am I not allowed to have fun?"

Ned flounders. "Thought you enjoyed the job, Arry."

She rolls her eyes, and shoves her hand out in front of her with as much drama as she can muster. 

"Lommy, the assignment?"

He reaches in his pocket and grabs the envelope he'd have received at his drop earlier, and walks to the edge of the bed, sitting down lightly as he hands the envelope to her.

"Sir Meryn Trant," he informs them all as she's pulling the pages out of the envelope. 

"Sir?" Hot Pie remarks, noting the obvious, that the man is titled. The name, though, hits Arya unlike any others they've had before, with an air of familiarity. 

Arya looks at the topmost picture within their files, and flashes back to her youth, to a party she'd been dragged to, at the home of her father's friend (and that of his intolerable eldest son, who was her sister Sansa's then-boyfriend, and his dreadful wife and their two younger children). One of the bodyguards had acted quite strange, looking around at the younger attendees with an interest that had given her great discomfort, an interest she later realized was some distortion of lust. It gave her a shiver even now. Her father had raised a fuss about him, and he was dismissed on the basis of that and other interpersonal issues, as of the last time she'd thought of it. Apparently, though, his career had not been over, and he's since been employed by another baronet. 

_Not for much longer, he won't be._

She steels herself. She was practically a weapon on her own, thanks to her intensive intelligence training, and she could handle a Nazi conspirator with pedophilic tendencies - and handle, she surely would.

"When's our flight?"


	8. Sansa III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I know I've fallen off with this a bit. I was working quite hard on the story for a while and other things have come up as interests, along with school starting a few weeks ago. I also lost a large chunk of my work on this, mainly background story work that I really wanted to have set up to help me with the plot going forward, which made it more difficult to work on especially as I spent some time quite distraught about it. That said, I do still intend to update and finish this. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!

Jon is in the parlor of the hotel before 7 that second morning of Sansa's trip to Hardhome, having shared that the morning hours, while crisp, were the best time for a walk and for a visit to Lyanna's grave. Sansa feels strangely, leaving Brienne behind to rest, to phone Podrick back in London and deal with someone else's case for a day, but knows she needs to reason with her heart to shove their attachment back into the _professional_ designation, and thinks it best. Besides, even in a place with older customs, a cousin was a perfectly decent escort for a walk; her mother had told her as much, even while she'd not had any cousins close by to visit with, let alone one old enough to escort her anywhere. 

She tries to keep from wondering _why_ , if her father's _beloved baby sister_ was barely a day's journey north, but in all the letters and documents she's aware of, there's nothing that gives any answer, only more questions - like the handwritten birth certificate Jon is certain his foster father has in his possession, with _not applicable_ written in the slots that are supposed to name a father and his profession, and only a singular letter well-scratched out where the name would otherwise begin. The man is written about with vague mentions in letters from the years of the Great War, and even with as little as there is Sansa can sense her father's uncharacteristic hostility towards him, which gives them the smallest ground on which to stand when it comes to possible reasons Lyanna had for leaving home - and the more vexing choice of staying away.

The walk from the hotel to the cemetery is unsurprisingly quite short in distance, but they're fairly slow on foot. Jon has practice walking with his cane, even though he seems, justifiably, not to like it, but Sansa has no desire to push. Her long legs often meant her siblings had to work to keep pace with her, but she tries not to cause that for others. On Jon's part, today's clothes seem a careful set of decisions - black boots, grey trousers, and the same leather jacket as the day before with a muted white and grey flannel under it, one that fits him much more closely than yesterday's, one he's buttoned up more fully. 

She absently wonders if that over-large red and black plaid flannel is the only clothing item he owns with any color to it, even though Sansa's not particularly colorful herself, today, and as it's intentional on her part she reminds herself it's unfair of her to decide something about him. She was sure to braid her hair and pull it into a decorative bun, and she's wearing the only expensive gloves she still owns, suede ones that had been her mother's before her. Her dress, in contrast, is one she'd made herself with rations of itchy black fabric, bearable because she wore a shift underneath and useful mainly for the cold, with blocky shoulders and a long skirt that rubs her legs through her stockings.

As they're walking, Jon begins telling her tales, ascribing memories to places in town: the town square fountain children play in when it's warm, which Lyanna had to drag him away from; the kosher delicatessen run by an immigrant family from mainland Europe, where many, including Jon, get food regularly; the town's single synagogue, where Lyanna took Jon when he was young, and its two churches, one of which is Davos'; the mural on the wall near where Davos sells fish and Britta sells baked goods at the town's market. 

By the time they've arrived at the already-open cemetery gate, a scene less imposing than an analogue in London, with a rusty metal arch and fencing half-hidden by winding winter flowers, Sansa feels connected to Hardhome, to Jon and his other family, and she's telling her own similar stories, relating baking and cooking with Arya and their mother and a particularly memorable snowball fight with Bran and Arya. 

"I should take you to meet Davos sometime, while you're here. If you'd like," Jon is suggesting as they pause at the gate. 

"I wish I had someone to introduce _you_ to," Sansa answers, a bit sadly now, but does add, "I would like to meet Davos as well, if he's all right with that."

Jon glances into the cemetery, and Sansa can't tell how intentional it is. 

"I think he will be," he says then, smiling - not a full, true smile, but smile enough - and holds out his free hand as an offer of escort. The gesture seems more fitted to a dance than to a grave visit, and she's plenty glad to accept. 

They're slower now, quieter, reverent. 

The path is mostly gravel, and most of the graves are well-tended, including Lyanna's. Hebrew square script declares her beloved, gone but not forgotten, and the death date of 1932 sets a new pain into Sansa's heart as she adds an ovular stone to the top of the grave. She hasn't followed Jewish tradition since her father, and she doesn't visit his resting place often enough, she _can't_ , she's not strong enough for that, but she knows. She knows what he'd direct them to do, knows that his hand would be clasped in her mother's just as Jon's is holding hers, and in the moment when they're both kneeling in prayer together, they're truly family.


End file.
